Painting an outbuilding? Choose the right scaffold.

For a shed, a summer house or a detached garage the MiTower is the model you hire. Altrex built it 75 cm narrow and for one person, with a reach that runs to 6.2 metres of working height. That suits this job, because you usually paint an outbuilding on your own and what counts is whether you can get the tower round a corner unaided. Booking runs online by model and height, at fixed prices including VAT. The build heights on offer are listed with the MiTower you can hire.

Those 75 cm are no side issue here. The tower has to pass a garden gate, squeeze by a water butt and travel the path between the outbuilding and the boundary. Behind a shed that strip is often less than half a metre wide, and the width of your build then decides whether you paint that side standing up or skip it against your will. Measure the narrowest gap on the route before you book anything, and measure the gate itself as well, hinges and bolt included, since those alone eat ten centimetres.

If you would rather hire a mobile scaffold that is wider, look at the RS51 at 75 cm or the RS52 at 135 cm across. Both are worth weighing up when two of you are painting, when a lot of material has to go up, or when the outbuilding has a storey with a loft window. For a plain single storey shed they are heavier than the work asks for and every corner costs you needless effort. The difference is set out in the comparison of MiTower and mobile scaffold.

The highest point on an outbuilding is almost never the wall but the fascia board or the barge board along the roof. On a shed or summer house that edge sits at 2.5 to 3.5 metres, which puts you on a working height of 4 to 6 metres. Your platform then stands at 2 to 4 metres, because from the deck you are standing on you still reach a good two metres up yourself. You give that figure when you book, along with your delivery date and the day the tower may go.

Measure from the ground where the wheels will end up, and around an outbuilding that is a different level on each side. If the terrace at the front sits a slab higher than the lawn along the flank, measure at the low side and hire on that, because that is the side that leaves you short. Where the roof has an overhang of thirty centimetres, add it on. The page about a working height of 6 metres shows which build goes with it.

Choosing too tight costs you more than it saves. Standing half a metre low, you paint the top band and the underside of the overhang with your arms stretched above your head, and that is precisely where a brush leaves streaks you spot the moment the sun comes round. For those last fifty centimetres you end up fetching a ladder anyway, on the side of the outbuilding where the ground is softest. Take the size above instead and save yourself the bother.

At an outbuilding you do not pick one standing spot but four, and they are rarely alike. The front sits on terrace slabs or on the drive, one flank on grass, the back on a narrow band of gravel or bare earth against the fence, and the fourth side borders a flower bed or a stack of firewood. Walk those four sides before you order the tower and look at where the wheels land, how far the stabilisers reach out and whether you can still pass with a full bucket without touching the wall.

On grass and earth you need something solid under the wheels, certainly after rain. Two thick planks or base plates per side are enough, provided they lie flat and do not rock the moment you put a foot on the platform. Watch the step between terrace and lawn as well, because the tower does not absorb that by itself and you level it again on each side. How to handle that is explained under a tower on uneven ground.

The obstacles round an outbuilding are always the same suspects: a water butt under the downpipe, firewood against the rear wall, bikes beside the door, a washing line at head height along the flank and a climber that has fixed itself to the render. Clear all that before the tower arrives, because you go round four times and each shuffle costs you half an hour. The stabilisers have to swing out freely on every side.

Count this job in sides and not in square metres. A shed of three by four metres means four walls, plus the door, the frame and the edge along the roof. Sanding, dusting off and priming bare patches take the first day, with the covering coats following after. For an outbuilding you paint the whole way round you land on three to four hire days, even when the painted area is modest and each side only keeps you busy a couple of hours.

Inside those hire days sit waiting periods you cannot make up by grafting harder. A fresh coat has its own curing time and that is printed on the tin, not written in your diary. Outdoors the weather adds to it: a timber shed stays clammy well into the morning after a night of dew, and no second coat goes onto a surface like that. Plan towards the day the work is certain to be finished, not the day it would theoretically fit.

Booking generously is cheap on this job. The full rate is settled over the opening twenty four hours, and each further hire day costs a twentieth of that, since 95 per cent comes off. A spare day for a rain shower costs you next to nothing, while too short a period means the back wall stays half painted because the van is already pulling up. Set your end date with room to spare, not the morning your final coat has to go on. More on that under the explanation of hire days.

Your platform measures 245 cm along its length, and that is the unit you divide the outbuilding into. A shed wall of three metres takes one set up plus a small remainder, a short end of two and a half metres fits in one go. Finish each wall completely from top to bottom before you move the tower, because the join between two positions shows up in the sun straight away if you leave it mid wall instead of on a corner or beside the door post.

Since you are working alone, everything you forget is a flight of steps. Gather it all in one heap on the ground first: the tin in a bucket, brush and roller, abrasive paper, a cloth and a roll of tape. Hang the bucket on the guard rail rather than standing it on the platform, so your feet stay free and you do not kick it over when you shuffle sideways. Anything you cannot carry in one hand simply stays below.

Shifting starts at ground level and with an empty platform. Take your materials off, retract the stabilisers, roll the tower round the corner and level it again there before you climb back on. The corners cost the most time, because you often have to move a planter or a bike rack first and then measure out afresh how far off the wall you stand. On an average summer house allow six to eight positions. At a larger garage you are having painted there will be more.

What turns up on your date is a complete, counted set of loose parts. Agree in advance where that stack may go, because in a garden the answer is less obvious than out on the street. The drive or the terrace is fine, the lawn you are about to roll wheels over is not, and in front of the gate least of all. Order on a working day before 15:00 has gone and your set is on its way to the garden the next working day, so plan a day ahead.

When the delivery arrives and when the tower leaves again are both your choice, and for outdoor work you check the forecast first. Have it brought a day before your first painting day, so you can build in peace and begin the first wall next morning. Assembly is your own part of the work, with the manual and the instruction film within reach. The step by step guide to building gives the order from base to guard rail.

At the end of your hire period we come back for the parts. You strike the tower and set everything out complete somewhere the driver can reach, which at an outbuilding usually means the front of the garden or the kerb. Prop the gate open and count the parts off as you dismantle. What the bringing and collecting comes to depends on the province you live in; the amount itself is shown with the delivery rates.

You stand on a deck rated to carry 200 kg per square metre, load class 3 within EN 1004, the standard our rental fleet is built to. On this job you sit well under that, since the MiTower is made for one person and only a bucket of paint and some tools go up with you. Keep it that way. Anyone dropping by to help with the high edges belongs beside the tower and not climbing after you, because the set up then changes character and the weight does start to count.

The fixed rules apply just as firmly here. The wheels go on the brake before a foot touches the steps, nobody and nothing stays aboard while it rolls, and in strong wind you come down. You hit that wind limit sooner at an outbuilding than against a house, because a shed at the bottom of the garden often stands in the open with only a low fence beside it. Walk round the stabilisers after every move and check that each one is clamped tight again.

The risk that really belongs to this job is the garden itself. Under the platform of the hired tower run children and pets, a slab path a tin lands hard on, and branches you do not see coming while you shift. Working with wood stain, the platform turns slippery the moment some goes astray, so wipe it off at once with a dry cloth before you take another step. The rules in a row are at working safely at height.